A Walk Along the Thames and the People Along the Way - The Bookseller Under Waterloo Bridge and the Skateboarder Who Could Fly
Continuing the walk on the Thames Path: This portion stretches from Vauxhall Bridge to Waterloo Bridge
A Long Stretch From Vauxhall Bridge to Waterloo Bridge
After my reader and his bicycle, I walked along the Thames Path capturing with my camera whatever inspired me. There was Vauxhall Bridge (Vauxhall is a corruption of “Fawkes Hall” a history I’ll look forward to exploring soon).
Lambeth Bridge was next and with it the Houses of Parliament (also known as Westminster Palace) and the Victoria and Elizabeth Towers. It’s only recently I’ve noticed how much bigger is the Victoria Tower compared to the Elizabeth Tower.
This is also where the lampposts turn into fish and the benches turn into ducks!
I love the view of the Houses of Parliament from across the Thames.
Then Westminster Bridge, the gateway, coming from the west, to the Southbank, with the London Eye and shops and amazing views and a lot more people at that point.
The world was waking up. Literally. There were people from all over the world walking the riverside path with me now and the sun was shining brightly over all of us and the river, too.
If you take a look at the map of the bridges above, you’ll see that the Hungerford Bridge is sandwiched between the two spans of the Golden Jubilee Bridge, which is a pedestrian-only bridge and quite gorgeous.
Climbing the Jubilee Bridge, I walked to the middle to capture a shot of Waterloo Bridge, coming up next, which was partially obscured from the Southbank.
Skateboard Graveyard
Gazing out at the spectacular views over the water, I happened to look down and found a strange and strangely eerie skateboard graveyard. It looked as if each had suffered a violent death which I’m sure stemmed from their involvement with the skatepark nearby:
I stood there, mulling over the probable ways they had gotten there, wondering about their stories…No wheels on most of them. Some were just parts of the board. I reckoned they were tossed overboard when the skateboarders broke them doing their tricks. (Yes, I do indeed have Sherlock Holmes tendencies.)…What would those skateboards say if they could talk?
The Skatepark
Back on the Southbank between the Jubilee and Waterloo bridges, I passed the colorful skatepark from whence I was sure all those skateboards had died. A lone skateboarder was there, doing his level best to defy gravity and very often succeeding.
The Bookseller
Crossing under the Waterloo Bridge, I saw that the booksellers had set up their wares.
Never one to pass up a book perusal, I thumbed through a few and found this one:
Taking my book (£8.50) up to the man in the flat cap there, I said, “In Paris you are called a bouquiniste, what are you in London?” He sort of shrugged his shoulders and said with an obviousness that was still kind, “A book selluh.”
“That makes good sense,” I replied with a smile. “How long have you all been here?”
“About forty years now. That fella over there, he started us selling books here,” and he pointed to the gentleman in the green beanie hat. Although the London booksellers have about five hundred years to go to catch up with the bouquinistes, they’re off to a wonderful start. I loved new little used poetry book. It has that old book scent.
He allowed me to take his photo and I think you can see what a nice man he was (and handsome, I thought, too.)
This whole asking strangers if I could take their photo was certainly getting easier!
I made my way under Waterloo Bridge and continued on my way. A bunch of birds were flying over the river and I had a thought: why not practice my shutter speed techniques on them, freeze-framing their flight over the water. If I could capture a bird in tack-sharp mid-flight directly in front of St. Paul’s dome, that would be an awesome shot. I positioned myself with a good view of St. Paul’s. (There’s a few places along the river you could do this, the dome is visible for a good stretch.) All my camera settings were programmed for fast shutter speed action. I’d compensated for the decreased light by opening up the aperture and tuning up the ISO just a wee bit. Settings all, well, set…I waited for the birds.
None showed! It was like they were camera shy! Whoever saw a camera shy sea gull? Where a bunch had flown by just a few seconds before, there were now none. Man! I waited a bit longer, but still no bird models for me.
And, then, I remembered the skateboarder.
Defying Gravity
I thought, “I could just mosey over to the skatepark and practice freeze-framing that skateboarder, hopefully when he’s midflight.” It was a great idea if I did think so myself and so I backtracked to the skatepark. There he was, still by himself, still defying gravity. I stood just outside the park and practiced a few burst shots to increase my chance of capturing him flying. And, here’s a sampling of what resulted:
They’re not all tack sharp but that’s okay. It was great practice and he sure was a better subject than the gulls would have been! I got a little excited over a few of the photos and interrupted his skateboarding to beckon him over. I smiled and said, “I hope it’s okay, I took a few shots of you on your skateboard and wanted to show them to you.” He took a look at my camera screen and smiled, “Wow…” he said. (It’s always very nice when someone says “wow” over your photos.) I asked him if I could send him the photos once I edited them, and he was agreeable to that. He told me he was from Brazil and apologized for not speaking better English. I told him his English was much better than my Portugese (I have no Portugese) for sure!
He also allowed me to take his portrait:
He gave me his email and I promised to send the photos to him and we bid each other a “Have a great day. Bye!” as he went back to flying and I went back to my Epic Sunday Walk.
Fantastic tour of London bridges. Felt like I was there. Also love the pictures of the people you ran into.
I am really enjoying the pix of the bridges and along the river. Does The Eye overhang the river? Which tower is the Victoria? So fascinating. See? Most people are very pleasant and will let you take their picture, so don’t let those few sourpusses deter you. You might be the most pleasant thing that has happened to them that day. Take care of those feet with all those walks!